Its not that players went through the Cataclysm content faster than expected. Its that the content wasn't there to begin with. A lot of Cataclysm's development was spent on redesigning level 1 to 60 leveling content. I don't know about the rest of you but I buy expansions expecting to play new content on my main, not to go back and do all the level 1 to 60 areas. I wonder how much more we would have had if they hadn't of done that ? That and putting the A Team on Titan.

Good thing I am one of those subscribers quitting due to lackluster content.
This patch 4.1 didn't even release anything other than the 2 new dungeons really, most was class "balances" yet they are still not balanced at all!
I'm looking forward to D3, it will be a while though.

If they stopped fucking around with buffing classes and giving them fotm for few months and actually fixing the game they would have some subscribers left

Prove that the people that have left aren't all the people that want desperately easy Heroics, then you'll have a point.

Originally Posted by Brogdan

But seriously, this is to be expected during a content lull like right now.

And if you can prove that the gap between raid tier 1 and raid tier 2 will be longer than what we had to wait for during TBC between tier 2 and 3, and you'll have a point too.

People trying to associate the fall off to 1 or two things, are wasting their time, because we don't know exactly when or how fast the numbers have dropped, which is the relivance thing we need in order to make an educated guess.

People making a big deal over a population fall off that may or may not have happened even if NO mistakes were happening from the dev team (6 years is a long time to play a single game guys, remember that), we can't judge those mistakes as being a direct cause either. As people can point out, there have been plenty of historically worse mistakes that haven't caused the same fall off.

I think the issue here is lack of appeal rather than driving people away. The amount of unique indiviuals that have stopped playing may very well be the same during previous periods, the difference this time is that before, a lot of people came back, and this time, they just can't be bothered.

This expansion was a bit of an anomaly because so much dev time was spent redoing 1-60 leveling, it made 80-85 too fast. The other things is the devs are making questing much easier for players now with the map overlays. In the past, a lot of quests would take considerably longer because you often wouldn´t know exactly where to go. They also made questing faster with new mechanisms like auto-complete questing and also quest hubs now require less traveling back and forth. All in all, this just make questing faster for us, but still require the same amount of dev time. I was a little disappointed with just how fast I got to éndgame´, which for me is just doing a few dailies and queuing for heroics.

Women always wonder why when they have sex with many men, they are considered whores, and when guys have sex with many women, they are considered players or studs, I like to put it this way, its like padlocks, if a key can open many locks, its a master key, but if a lock can be opened by many keys, its a shitty fucking lock.

Its not that players went through the Cataclysm content faster than expected. Its that the content wasn't there to begin with. A lot of Cataclysm's development was spent on redesigning level 1 to 60 leveling content. I don't know about the rest of you but I buy expansions expecting to play new content on my main, not to go back and do all the level 1 to 60 areas. I wonder how much more we would have had if they hadn't of done that ? That and putting the A Team on Titan.

Very true, but remember that Wrath's tier 1 was cleared in 24 hours, Cata and TBC both took 5 months, and TBC's was gated.

Player mentality is the issue. Killing everything on Normal once seems to be enough for them to claim "I've cleared the content" and seem to forget what happened during the previous 2 expansions, which saw bigger lulls and easier content.

WoW only has ~4 million subs in EU/NA and since KN/TW/CN subs are all pre-paid, they really aren't traditional subs. The loss % is, infact, a great deal higher than 5%.

[Citation needed]

11.4 million is still a fuckton. We may have reached market saturation though. Unfortunately(or, fortunately, depending on your perspective), this means than any WoW-clones coming out soon won't be doing so great.

Its not that players went through the Cataclysm content faster than expected. Its that the content wasn't there to begin with. A lot of Cataclysm's development was spent on redesigning level 1 to 60 leveling content. I don't know about the rest of you but I buy expansions expecting to play new content on my main, not to go back and do all the level 1 to 60 areas. I wonder how much more we would have had if they hadn't of done that ? That and putting the A Team on Titan.

they did say months before release that there intention was to re do the old content, and i for one dont mind, its actually nice to do some alts, and the whole world was remodelled

---------- Post added 2011-05-10 at 07:32 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Craigadiddle

Good thing I am one of those subscribers quitting due to lackluster content.
This patch 4.1 didn't even release anything other than the 2 new dungeons really, most was class "balances" yet they are still not balanced at all!
I'm looking forward to D3, it will be a while though.

Has anyone considered that maybe the 5% drop was a result of the end of a semester coming up and people may have decided to devote time to passing their classes? Maybe? Unless the 5% drop kept dropping over 3 or more quarters steadily, I wouldn't pay it any mind to be honest. Though it IS true that players burned through the content very quickly, is that necessarily a bad thing? It gives some people time to focus on other things and let them enjoy the game instead of feeling like it was a second or third job to them.... and someone made a comment about the dual boxers dropping their other accounts, THAT is HIGHLY more likely than people just dropping the game because of a slight lull in pace.

This is simple reason why so many people stopped playing, because 10 man and 25 man is the same difficulty and reward. Its just easier to get 10 competent players to raid than it is to get 25. Sure all the hardcore guilds are still 25 but they never had a problem filling spots. All the middle of the game guilds have a handful of good players and this 10m raiding makes it easier for them to progress. All the players that are getting sat or just not progressing cause all that left is all the bads to group with are just quitting.

People are progressing through the content much faster now is cause they only need 10 good players and no one to hold them back.

Not the end times, just a rejection of Cataclysm paired with people burning through a thinner layer of leveling content, and then looking ahead to see only recycled old world stuff, canceling their subscriptions until the next expansion.

So funny people are posting who have allegedly quit, wouldn't you have better things to do now? It seems not, meaning you will be back in a few days or maybe haven't quit at all. Demonstrates this game still has a massive hold on you. Is it really that there was not enough content for these players or that they weren't good enough or didnt want to put the effort in to complete what was left?